Personal Meltdowns
by gawilliams
Summary: Sequel to Personal Sacrifice.  Booth and Bones each have a personal meltdown after Brennan's startling revelation.  This continuation is based on the promo for next weeks episode.


_I have decided to make this a three story arc. The rapid and numerous responses from Personal Sacrifices were totally unexpected, but deeply appreciated. In this one, I am basing what happens on the promo for next weeks episode where Bones apparently has reached the end of her endurance of this whole mess. I make it mine by keeping to the PTSD element despite not knowing if HH is going in that direction or not, and both Booth and Bones have meltdowns. Personally I think HH would be a fool not to go in this direction, but then I'm not him, thankfully. I hope you enjoy this one, despite it's darker, angsty tone. Gregg._

_Disclaimer: I don't own, or profit from, these characters or franchise. No copyright infringement is intended._

Booth was in a very bad place at the moment. Bones had had a meltdown in the SUV and totally blew him away with her revelation. She'd admitted that she blew it last year. She did love him, and she was terrified, and crushed, that she was now having to face a life alone. Cam's words from over a year before just after Sweets had given him all that bullshit about his brain scans came flooding back and he wanted to vomit. Bones had blown apart what little equanimity that Booth had had with Hannah here, and when he'd come home visibly shaken, pale, and in a daze, he had told Hannah what had happened, including what had gone on the year before. Hannah had done the one thing that he knew was needed, though he wasn't sure if he could handle it. She was gone. Amicably, endearingly, but gone nonetheless. It was at that moment that Booth had recognized what had been going on since he'd taken up with Hannah in Afghanistan, and here in DC. He was in the midst of a very serious case of PTSD. Hannah, rather than gambling, had been his coping mechanism this time. His focus for the last almost seven years, Bones, he had callously pushed aside with his almost unconscionable statement of intent to move on. He took another drink of whiskey and picked up his cell phone. He punched a number that he had only rarely, and those times reluctantly, used.

"_Hello?_"

"Sweets?" Booth asked in a shaky voice. He wasn't sure if he was all there, but if anyone could help at this point it was the twelve year old who, though he had been the catalyst for much of the disaster this past year, was someone he knew he could trust.

"_Agent Booth?_"

If it weren't for the dire need of the moment, Booth would have made some snarky retort, but he was in too much emotional pain to do anything of the sort.

"I need help," Booth managed to get out, though it sounded almost desperate to his own ears.

"_Where are you?_" Sweets asked instantly.

"Home," he told the therapist simply.

"_I'll be there in ten minutes_," Sweets promised.

Booth snapped the cell phone shut and began slowly rocking, not even aware he was doing so. If he had been thinking straight he would have recognized it as the direct result of being in the middle of a major episode. Closing his eyes, he prayed for help. He'd been down a dark path once before, and he was barely preventing himself from going down that road again.

_**MEANWHILE**_

Bones couldn't settle down. She'd been crying and practically hyperventilating since she'd been overwhelmed by her emotions. She'd done it. She'd told Booth her secret, and that she was crushed that she was destined to love alone now because of her dreadful mistake the previous year. She'd tried so hard to be there for Booth. To be the friend he'd always been for her. She thought that she had been doing well, until this case. This damn case that had unleashed all of the pain and anguish she'd been compartmentalizing for so many years, and especially this past year since she had rejected Booth. She knew if she looked in a mirror she would see a woman who had lost her anchor, her focus that let her function. The tears that wouldn't stop had made a ruin of her makeup, and she must look like death warmed over. She managed to calm herself just enough to pull out her cell phone and make a call to a person she never before would have called in this kind of circumstance.

"_Hello?_"

"Cam?" she said, sure her voice held all the dread and pain she was experiencing.

"_Dr. Brennan?_" Cam asked, shocked at the tone of voice on the other end of the line.

"I can't stop," Bones managed to get out before she felt another wave of nausea hit her.

"_Where are you Dr. Brennan?_" Cam demanded.

"Home," Bones said feebly. "I need a friend," she added, almost like the emotionally damaged teenager she had been would have begged for when she became part of the system.

"_I'll be there in fifteen minutes_," Cam said firmly. She was dead certain about what had finally happened, and if Sweets was right three weeks before, then this was serious. They had all thought that it would be Booth who would have the meltdown and realization of what had been happening. It seemed as if Dr. Brennan had reached the end of her own emotional tether in this increasingly frustrating drama.

_**BOOTH'S APARTMENT**_

Sweets entered the apartment slowly. Here had been no response to his knock, and given the volatile nature of Booth's emotions, and the background as a Ranger and sniper that the older man had, he was extremely careful about opening the door and going in without an invitation.

The apartment was dark, the only light coming from the streetlight outside through the living room window. It had an eery quality that gave an even more haunting picture when he saw Booth steadily rocking slightly on the couch, his head in his hands, a few gentle sobs emanating from him. This was bad. Really bad. He'd known that Booth, when it hit him, wouldn't be able to cope well, but this was worse than he'd been expecting. It was time for some serious damage control.

"Agent Booth?" he calmly asked, noting everything around him as he moved into the room softly.

"If I didn't need your help, I'd break every bone in your body, Sweets," Booth said, his voice still shaky, but there was a definite undercurrent of genuine venom in it.

"I know," Sweets acknowledged. He'd been paying for his sins in regards to Booth and Brennan for a long time now, from his keeping Brennan off the notify list that Booth was really alive, to the whole lie about the brain scans, to his goading Booth into pressing Brennan on a relationship. Frankly, he was lucky he had his license still, considering that those two could have made a powerful case that he had violated the most basic of ethical considerations that he had to maintain under his license.

"Why didn't I know?" Booth asked, still rocking slightly. "I've been through this before. Why didn't I see it?"

Sweets took a seat opposite Booth and replied. "You didn't see it because all of your better focal points were gone," he told the man he considered to be a friend, despite all he had done to the man that had helped precipitate this. "You never really got away from the original PTSD, Booth. No one ever does, fully, and going back into the Army brought it all back. When you are here, you've had Dr. Brennan, and your son, and your work to help you cope with the emotions surrounding your first stint in the military. Add in the damage to your pride that you were feeling after Dr. Brennan rejected you, and your forming a sexual relationship with Hannah was almost a foregone conclusion."

"But I should have known!" Booth said harshly.

"Why?" Sweets asked him.

"It's what I do, Sweets," Booth said sarcastically.

Sweets nodded. "But you also gamble," he pointed out. "Yet you didn't do that."

"What do you mean?" Booth asked.

"As you know, behaviors are coping mechanisms," Sweets told him. "Before you met Dr. Brennan, you gambled. But that stopped, and you focused your mind on her and the work you both do. That turned into a deep personal bond, and kept you from gambling. Once Dr. Brennan rejected you, you went back into the military. You didn't gamble, which you would recognize it for what it is. Instead you form a sexual relationship with Hannah, which gave you validation of your statement that you needed to move on, as well as assuage your damaged pride over the rejection. The issues this time around were skewed, and there was no logical reason that you should have recognized what was happening."

"But I hurt Bones, Sweets," Booth said with genuine anguish.

"Yes, you did," Sweets acknowledged.

"But I promised her I'd always be there for her, and then I do this," Booth agonized. "And I've ignored my friends. Now I find out that Bones does love me and feels like she's going to be alone the rest of her life."

Sweets could see that Booth was sinking again at the mention of Dr. Brennan, so he decided to turn it around and make it a positive. She'd been his focus before, she could be again.

"Why does she have to be alone the rest of her life?" Sweets asked.

"Because I fucked up and never even gave her the chance to show me she'd changed her mind," Booth moaned. "Now I can see her expressions these last couple months and I want to shoot myself for not seeing it. Why was she so supportive? Why didn't she just beat the crap out of me and tell me I was being an idiot?"

"Because she loves you," Sweets told him. He noticed that Booth was slowly processing all of this. The rocking was not there, and his voice was steadier. This could still end in disaster, but this short bit of improvised therapy seemed to be stemming off the worst of the meltdown.

"What?"

"Even though you interfered at times and gave her a lot of shit over her seeing other men over the years, you always supported her when it counted, and never made her out to be anything less than the incredible person you've always considered her," Sweets explained. "She was showing you the same kind of respect, and was waiting, ready to be there for you however you needed her when you reached the point where you realized you were suffering from PTSD."

"I don't even deserve her friendship," Booth groaned. He put his head back in his hands, hoping that the massive headache that was forming would go away.

Sweets settled back in the chair, convinced that Booth was now ready to deal with the fallout of this. Now it would take a lot of talking, and a lot of self-realization.

_**BONES' APARTMENT**_

Cam didn't even bother to knock on the door. She knew that Dr. Brennan would likely not even hear the knock anyway, so she just opened the door and walked in. She found Brennan on the couch, knees pulled up to her chest, her arms wrapped around her legs, slowly rocking back and forth, crying silently. So, she'd dropped this low into her personal meltdown. Taking a breath, she spoke.

"Dr. Brennan?" she asked as she took a seat next to the brilliant scientist.

In a stuttering, halting voice, hitched by breathlessness from the crying, Brennan managed to get out "I can't stop it."

"Stop what?" Cam asked, knowing that Brennan would have to verbalize what she was feeling before the damage to her mental state was too severe. That was a key step to bringing focus and calm to the situation.

"His face," Brennan said in that same hitched voice. "I keep seeing his face."

"Booth's?" Cam asked, knowing the answer already.

"I hurt him," Brennan said. "I ruined everything." She squeezed her eyes shut trying to get the image of Booth's face on the night when she rejected him out of her head. "I don't want to be alone."

Cam remembered when she had told Booth to tread carefully when it came to Brennan or the woman would close up and never let anyone in again. Booth had listened once, and things had progressed towards Brennan and him getting together soon, but because of Sweets Booth had rushed it and this was the end result. She had to make this right somehow.

"Why do you think you'll be alone?" she asked. This could let her deal with a lot of issues, so she focused on that statement.

"Booth is the only person I've ever been able to see myself with, and trust enough, for the long term," Brennan struggled to say with a semblance of a calm delivery. She was halfway successful. "I tried so hard since we got back to show him that I was ready when he was. I wanted him to know that even if it wasn't going to happen, I was still his friend."

"And you've succeeded," Cam observed.

Brennan shook her head. "I ruined it all tonight," she said, the tone full of anguish. "I let him know how I really feel."

"He was going to find out eventually," Cam offered. She could see the emotional floodgates open in her colleague, and, she was willing to admit now, close friend. The famous scientist who had for so many years held her emotions in firm check, was now seeing the world around her with no blinders and feeling what others also felt. Only it was hitting her all at once. The only way to get beyond the flood was to reinstall some of the woman's firm logic.

"But not until Hannah was gone for good!" Brennan spat out, standing and moving back and forth across the room.

"Why?"

"I don't want Booth to have any regrets," Brennan replied softly. She remembered what Booth's Grandfather had told her about regrets and now she wished she had heeded his advice.

"Dr. Brennan, he already has regrets," Cam told her. "We all do. That's what living in the world we are in entails. And, as unfortunate as it may be, we all make mistakes that hurt others, even those we're closest to. That doesn't mean that it's wrong."

Brennan looked at Cam with piercing eyes. Her mind was working a mile a second and she was slowly calming down. She was glad she'd called Cam and not Angela.

Cam observed her carefully and could see the calming effect that the other woman's thoughts were bringing on. Now she could work with her and see if perhaps Brennan's and Booth's future with each other may be salvaged. If nothing else she fairly sure that Brennan could move forward regardless, though she would need some professional counseling after all of this.

"Why don't you tell me what makes Booth so special to you?" Cam asked, settling back as she saw Brennan take a seat back on the couch. She listened as Brennan began to speak.

_**SEVERAL HOURS LATER**_

Cam got into her car and sighed in relief. Brennan was still a bit distraught, and nervous about possibly facing Booth anytime soon, but she had a better handle on things now. But Cam knew that while she may know a great deal about brain injuries and the like, something like this was way out of her field. She called Sweets.

"_Sweets_," came the answer when the other person picked up the phone.

"Sweets, Brennan had a major meltdown this evening and I just talked her down from it," she told the young psychologist.

"_I just talked Booth down from one, too_," Sweets told her.

"How's he doing?" Cam asked.

"_Same as Dr. Brennan_," Sweets replied. "_I just left his apartment about half an hour ago. He's going to need some therapy, but he should be okay assuming that Dr. Brennan is there for him_."

"As long as Booth is willing to let her in," Cam observed. "She's having trouble believing that he would want to be anywhere near her after all that's happened."

"_I think we should spend some time with each of them and help them get it together enough for them to have a face to face with each other_," Sweets suggested. "_At the moment they're too fragile. I'm going to contact the Bureau and place Booth on a medical leave of absence, which I already informed him of, and I think Dr. Brennan would benefit from a few days off as well_."

"She told me she wanted to take some personal time, which if this was any other situation would have shocked me," Cam informed him. "I'll spend time with her myself, and also go and visit with Booth in the next day or so."

"_Meet me tomorrow for breakfast at the Diner and I'll go over some things to focus in on, and watch for when you're talking with them_," Sweets told her. "_We can also compare notes and make sure that we're on the same page as we help them_."

Cam readily agreed and they talked for a few more minutes before hanging up. Cam went home to think about what all this could mean in the long term, and also spent some time doing some research on how to counsel a person with PTSD as she was now certain that not only did Booth have it, but Dr. Brennan did as well. The more she pondered, the more she was glad the dual meltdowns happened now and not much further down the road where the situation may not have been as approachable. Now she was only worried for her friends.

_A/N: This may seem odd ending this story here, but it is the second part of the three story arc and I wanted to see how a meltdown and the initial assistance would play out. I hope this worked for you. The next story will be ready in a few days and will be the face to face confrontation between Booth and Bones. Gregg._


End file.
